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Your Wedding Cake Holds a Secret Meaning You Never Knew

Hi friends. Considering the ever-growing threat of nuclear war, natural disasters, and white supremacy, I was thinking we could talk about CAKE! Not just any cake—wedding cake.
Does a more bipartisan wedding tradition exist? Nay, I say. You’ve got
gluten-free cake, individually wrapped cupcakes, cake’s rustic cousin
(the pie), and so many other sugary options that delight Republicans and
Democrats alike. I became so naively hopeful that the history of
wedding cake would be as pleasant and pure as an episode of The Great British Bake Off that I found myself snickering and verbalizing “stahhp” aloud while researching alone in my kitchen.

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It’s almost as if when Susan Waggoner wrote her tome of wedding history,
she was setting the stage for someone as world-weary as myself to come
along and crack joke after joke to keep from curling up in a corner
never to enter society again. With false enthusiasm, she introduces the
cake as “the single most identifiable member of the wedding” aside from
the bride, but then briskly turns toward the camera to whisper, “But the
festive, flower-bedecked confection we know today bears little
resemblance to cakes of earlier times, which were meant to ensure not
joy but reproduction.”

Reproduction. Of course! How silly of me to assume a cake would simply be enjoyed as a sweet part of a couple’s celebration when obviously
the cake is all about ensuring the human race would grow to 7.5 billion
by 2017. Here’s a pretty picture: “In ancient Greece, small hard loaves
of grain were symbolically offered to guests and broken over the
bride’s head to woo the gods of prosperity and fertility.” What a lucky
woman, to be bonked over the head with a baguette in hopes she would put
a bun in the oven that very night!

[post_ads]In Rome,
both the bride and groom had bread broken over their heads, and “eager
to secure a portion of the blessing for themselves, guests scrambled to
retrieve the crumbs as they scattered at the feet of the newlyweds.”
Today we wedding attendees
don’t have to scramble because someone in the kitchen is assigned the
harrowing duty of cutting and serving the cake to all the guests, plus
many of us don’t want kids.

Wedding cakes
evolved from bread to sweet buns as Europe gained access to more spices
and fruits. Around Shakespeare’s time, the bride’s friends would each
bring a sweet bun to the wedding, and “the size of the pile of buns was
seen as a reflection of the bride’s popularity.” The invention of icing
may have come about when early bridesmaids sought to ensure the pile
would not be toppled by adhering the buns with honey and applesauce.
See? The tradition of bridesmaids performing tedious tasks for their
friend is as old as time.

And then, one
invention changed the very essence of what we know to be cake today:
baking soda. Because of baking soda, cakes were empowered to grow to
heights never before seen. Waggoner writes, “The new cake, light in
color and billowing in style, embodied the Victorian vision of chaste
but profusely bedecked virginity.” If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a
million times: cake is virginity personified. And so, much like the opening scene to 101 Dalmatians in which dogs trot along with their identical humans, brides and wedding cakes were meant for twinning.

And
so I ask you to pause and recall your very own wedding cake or the one
you so desire. What does this cake say about you? Is the cake fussy and
trying a bit too hard, is it basic and straight-forward, or is it from
Costco? Dare I say—have we vastly underestimated cakes, which are
mirrors to our souls?

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When I shouted into the
social media void about wedding cake, the stories that came back to me
were numerous. Here is an abbreviated list of the real wedding cakes
that were discussed:

● A funfetti cake covered in sprinkles with a lego bride and groom cake topper

●
A groom’s cake shaped like an iPad with the screensaver depicting an
Olan Mills portrait of the groom holding his cat while wearing a sweater
and glasses

I
think you are beginning to see my point. Cakes know us better than we
know ourselves. By seeming so innocent, so inconsequential, they’ve
gotten inside our heads. So I urge you: the next time you attend a
wedding, do not forget to get a glimpse of the cake, and do not just
chew it mindlessly as you sip your stale coffee, because, in the end, a
cake is worth a thousand wedding vows.